Walking the walk…

[Caution – Rant ahead]

Since the beginning of time, civilisations had common people, and a few exceptional people that the rest of the community looked up to, admired their wisdom, and came to seek advice in time of need. These exceptional people were recognised for their wisdom, by their behaviour, and results in their field of expertise. But apparently, those days are now gone…

Today, and especially in this newly-created industry of Social Media and Online marketing, we have experts, gurus, and  ninjas, all self proclaimed. Too many of these people are not recognised for their contribution and success, but they make the community aware of their new self-inflicted title, and rob the uninitiated  of their hard-earned-cash. Of course, not all “gurus” are like that, but as time goes by, I come across too many of them.

The problem I see in assessing whether or not you’re talking to an expert, is that most people don’t fully understand that field of expertise, and making the mistake of “trusting” the expert. We all see it on a daily basis:

We’ll go on board an aircraft, putting our lives at the hands of the pilot, without checking his/her credentials, or walk into a pharmacy, and take whatever the pharmacist will give us, no questions or doubts…

There are too many business-related professional services people (Lawyers, accountants, consultants, financial planners, etc.) who we’ll seek their professional advice without checking who are we taking the advice from.

The issue here that people will give advice to others, without implementing their knowledge in their own lives. Maybe in other professions, it’s difficult to tell if the “expert” is just giving advice, or is a practitioner. How credible would you find the advice from an overweight personal trainer, a smoking doctor, or a dentist with bad teeth? But these things are easy to spot. How about getting advice from a poor financial adviser? Or from an IT consultant who isn’t on top of her game? That would be more difficult to spot, wouldn’t it?

When it comes to professional services providers, you’d need to do some digging around, before taking any advice on board. I’ve recently met with a firm of career management, advocating LinkedIn as the must-have tool in a job seekers’ arsenal. 80% of the firms’ consultants didn’t have an up-to-date or even complete LinkedIn profile. I’m not talking about an OUTSTANDING profile, but just a completed one.. Only 3 consultants (out of 20) had a completed profile.

If you’re seeking advice, make sure you take it from a reputable source. Not by name, but by action! Don’t be fooled by a big brand – they are just as guilty in building unjustified hype as the small firms / consultants.

Make sure they are Walking the walk, not just talking the talk…